Medicare is Offering Bonuses to Digitize Medical Records
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Officials for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced on Wednesday that the agency plans on distributing billions in stimulus monies to upgrade the nation’s paper medical records to electronic ones. Under the proposal, doctors and hospitals that keep UPDATED electronic medical records (EMR) of their patients could receive bonus payments for using EMR-based software systems. While the proposal that was floated is not definite, it was posted to the agency’s website and is open for public comment for 60 days before the final guidelines are issued.
According to agency spokespersons, healthcare professionals (HCPs) who use EMR for 80 per cent of their medical instructions could receive bonus payments. This means that HCPs would have to provide patients with printouts of their medical history and use computers for potential drug-drug interactions. Further, hospitals would be required to complete 10 per cent of medical orders electronically. Separately, the agency laid out technology standards that EMR software should meet to qualify for the program.
Although technology standards for government-based EMR systems have now been delineated, similar standards for private sector EMR keeping systems have yet to be clearly enunciated by the government. Many hospitals and HCP organizations hastily threw together EMR plans to qualify for stimulus monies that were disbursed early last year. Unfortunately, at present, there is still no general consensus on the software platforms and middleware programs that will need to be developed so that different EMR systems can communicate with one another! Consequently, the national drive to digitize paper medical records is occurring in a haphazard and piecemeal fashion. To realize improved efficiencies and cost savings, I contend that general guidelines ought to be issued before too much private sector work goes on. Allowing the private sector to dictate technology standards may not be in the best interest of a national EMR effort. Nevertheless, as I mentioned an earlier post this week, healthcare informatics is one of the fasted growing industries in the US!
Until next time...
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